I think the after-arc is definitely worth playing. It's not grindy and there's a lot of new content. I honestly forget how long it took, though...it's not another full game or anything, but it isn't short either. Maybe 15 hours?

I think my favorite PS3-exclusive game is inFamous 2. Is that... weird? Whatever, this game rules. This is my third playthrough, and I'm taking care to max out my powers for a few stray trophies. I will try and do some UGC stuff later as well. Very early in the Flood Town section (3rd of 4 "chapters" in inFamous 2).

So I played Tales of Graces f pretty heavily the last two weeks. Logged something like 62 Hours in total, and now the Lineage and Legacies arc starts?!

So much game....as much as I like it (I don't remember the last time I put this amount of time into a game!), is it worth playing through the after-arc, or is it really long and grindy?

Arcadia Dungeon is a terrible maze, but a damned pretty one.

It's not bad. It's actually quite short, play it right and it's over within 10 hours (till sidequests). THEN you can play Zhonecage!! The abosoute and very hard secret dungeon (honestly, the game never ends)!

One thing I liked about L&L is the story. I'm sure few would agree, and yeah they shouldn't because it's pretty simple, but I liked its implications with regards to fleshing out the ending for the characters (especially Sophie). The battle system only gets better, Accel mode is pretty grand, and the enemies are tougher. It also has what is (besides Arcadia Garden) probably the most relaxing final dungeon ever and some really, really awesome weapons (especially if you're a Tales fan). Keep with it, it's not too bad, just keep dualizing the shit out of your gear. :)

I never actually did Zhonecage...is it actually worth it? Isn't there a bunch of crap you have to do first...

...penguin...

Zhonecage is a bit of a bragging right more than anything, but more optimistically, it's a great challenge.... I mean, you find a TON of great gear. You can do the cameo battle in the arena after (required if you're going for Platinum), and you get a few funny scenes with pseudo-versions of old NPCs as well as a "sexy cameo" (also the Turtlez flute is here which is, hands down, one of the best items in the game). It's a solid pain in the ass though.

The only requirement is a cleared save (star on savegame). Go to Lhant Manor and you'll get a scene.It's a dungeon to farm the best gear and challenge extra bosses.If you win against the last Zhonecage boss, it also powers up the last boss to its true form.I like how the powered up form is challenging as it updates the boss to Zhonecage difficulty (instead of him feeling puny after you're grinded/crafted the best gear).

A photo of Bikini Judith from ToVReminds me of SO2 where if you did the North City sidequest (and Click PA events), you powered up the final boss to an 11 and he'd fuck you up even with the best gear.

I wish SO2 was harder throughout, as a whole. Make the item crafting actually useful :(

Although even then you can't craft anything decent till the game's basically over anyway :(

And maybe make the middle of the game less of a gauntlet of unwinnable boss fights :(

Anyways, I've finally filled out the 100 man brawl bullshit in SSBBrawl. Goddamn, did it suck when you have to take down a hundred enemies with the likes of Jigglypuff and Wario. Anyways, I've discovered that my final unknown challenge simply requires 2000 KOs in Brawls means that I can probably kill an hour on bashing a playerless player (probably gonna set it as Jigglypuff or Pikachu). Don't know if special brawl rules count towards the count or not as setting it at 300% mode and endless time will be a useful time saver on that end. After that, its only the 15 minute brawl bullshit (its bad enough to go 4 and a half minutes straight let alone over three times the length, all on one life, with no healing, and against five level 9 AI alloys or above at once constantly with the occasional NPC to pick up a Star Man, or grab a good pokeball or assist trophy, or chuck a sword at you, or hit you with a pitfall while trying to recover, or chuck a Lil'Sparky at the floor and getting nailed by that, or throw one of like 7 bomb types at you provided you don't just simply get randomly blown up by one of those 7 bomb types spawning on top of you and immediately detonating and either stacking large amounts of damage on you or killing you outright, or catching you with a badly placed bumper or urchin, or nail you with the sparkler cannon, or a fully charged Super Scope 6 shot, or precisely chaining you out of bounds with the blaster, or nabbing a fire flower, a dish of curry, or a Lip's Stick and stack enough damage where even a slight breeze will send you packing 4 minutes into the match, nailing you with a freezie, and so on). Outside of those two things though, all that's left is collecting all the stickers which can be cheesed (actually, you know what, fuck the 15-minute thing, I'm just going to cheese it with Pit; see you tomorrow).